Here's how much it costs to hack your competitor's email

So you want to snoop through your competition's email? Yeah, we can make that happen, but it'll cost ya!

How much? You'd be surprised. Secure Works' researchers have dug deep into a popular cyber-crime forum to find out how much it costs to hire a hacker to do your dirty work, and the results, somewhat surprising, have been published in the Secure Works report (PDF).

Apparently, the luxury of reading your competitor's email will cost you $500 (£353). To make things even better, the hacker will not change the email's password or anything, so it will be pretty darn hard for the victim to realise he's being spied upon.

And if you're interested in someone's social media account, or private emails such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo!, that's gonna cost even less – a stunning $129 (£91).

Despite these surprisingly low prices, and I'll show you some more below, the researchers say that hackers have also developed a sense of entrepreneurship:

“Prices and goods are not the only way sellers are distinguishing themselves. There also continues to be a focus on salesmanship. Compared to the report last year, our security experts noted this time around that many hackers were expanding their working hours to include weekends and even promising to be available 24 hours a day,” the report says.

Credit cards are also quite popular – American Visa can be bought for $7, while Visa Classic and MasterCard will set you back $15. Asian cards (Visa Classic and MasterCard Standard for Japan and Asia) with Track 1 and Track 2 data cost $50.